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Diamonds Are Forever

Connery’s comeback caper, easily the best ‘non-serious’ Bond of the lot. It’s endearingly daft without being offensively stupid (yes, Moonraker, we’re looking at you), goes all over the place without getting tedious, and features the great more-than-just-a-dodgy-stereotype sub-villains Kidd and Wint. OK, so Charles Gray is a disappointingly avuncular Blofeld, Jill ‘Tiffany Case’ St. John and Lana ‘Plenty O’Toole’ Wood don’t do much, and the theme song’s by Shirley bleedin’ Bassey again, but what a plot! Directionless, profligate, vulgar and wantonly episodic, just how Bond should be. You can imagine the scene – with only weeks to go until shooting starts, round the big conference table a hundred harried writers nervously pitch their little bits of business – “OK, so there’s this robotic pipe-welder, right…” “There’s a bomb hidden in a big fake trifle…” “Bond fights two feisty kung fu ladies in bikinis!” “How about we have Q playing the fruit machines?” “… and so the car goes up on two wheels…” “… he sticks the marching band cassette down her pants…” “… false fingerprints…” “… TWO Blofelds…” “… a moon buggy!!” – and Good Old Cubby, at head of table, holds up his hand for silence, takes a drag on his cigar, leans forward and says, “Fellas… we’ll shoot ’em all!” And we’re so glad he did.

10 Comments

10 Comments

  1. Glenn Aylett

    July 18, 2009 at 6:48 pm

    For me the minor characters made it watchable. The gay assasins Kidd and Wint and their wisecracks after they killed someone in a fiendish way are hilarious and then, of course, we have Bambi and Thumper and their martial arts lesson for Bond who instead of seducing the lovely Thumper gets a karate kick. However, Sean looked bored all the way through and that pink tie he wore- well was it part of camped up nature of the film or was it the only tie he could find?

  2. Richard Davies

    December 7, 2010 at 9:45 pm

    Supposedly Sean Connery came back to do this only due to a big pay rise, though he decently donated it to charity.

    Howard Hughes was the insparation for Willard Whyte, &, some of the Las Vegas was shot around Hughes owned property.

    Quite a lot of footage was lost in editing, including a cameo by Sammy Davis Jr.

  3. Glenn A

    September 16, 2017 at 1:12 pm

    Welcome to hell, Blofeld, I was walking my rat, some of the lines are corkers. It’s not my favouite Bond, as Sean appears overweight and bored all the way through, but it has some appeal. Also using a wedgie to dispose of a villain is a bit more novel than a karate strike to the neck.

  4. THX 1139

    September 17, 2017 at 12:38 am

    Mark Gatiss’ description of Bond “looking like your dad at the beach” is a difficult image to shift.

  5. David Smith

    September 17, 2017 at 7:34 am

    I’m rather fond of the goof quite early on, where a chap from I think DeBeers is explaining the diamond mining process, and his narrated dialogue bizarrely loops round so he ends up saying a couple of the lines twice. Something about “It’s a necessary precaution…”?

    It’s a cracking Bond film on the whole, though.

    • George White

      November 27, 2017 at 10:54 pm

      “The whole process from start to finish operates under an airtight security system,it’s an essential precaution even though the industry prides itself on the loyalty and devotion of it’s workers”, said by Lawrence Naismith, Mr. Blunden himself, and the Judge off the Persuaders.

      It feels like a B-movie from UA, the same era when they were doing TV movie-level war movies like Underground and the McKenzie Break in Ireland, the Thousand Plane Raid, Hell Boats, and various low-rent pre-stardom Burt Reynolds thrillers. It also feels a bit ITC in the clearly UK-shot bits.

      Apparently, Hamilton got the ball-chute idea from a sketch show he saw on TV. It might have been a Michael Bentine sketch. So, Bond stole from the Potties.

      • Richard16378

        November 28, 2017 at 1:53 pm

        At one time they were going to get Gerry Anderson on board to make Moonraker around this time, complete with Tony Barwick regular writing a script.

  6. Richard16378

    September 17, 2017 at 8:18 pm

    It’s almost a foreshadowing of the Moore, era almost with more quirky set pieces & a masterplan that doesn’t quite hold together if you think about it too much, but still a great way to feel entertained on a bank holiday evening.

  7. Droogie

    September 18, 2017 at 1:17 am

    The best thing about this Bond movie is the bizarre Moon Landing conspiracy scene where 007 crashes through a fake Apollo mission being filmed in a studio.

  8. Glenn A

    November 25, 2017 at 4:12 pm

    After Kidd and Wint and their Bombe Surprise are dispensed with, did Bond and Tiffany finish off the rest of the buffet, only to find it was laced with arsenic and they died later on, and a new 007 had to be found? Did Thumper escape from jail and teach karate and judo to a young woman who wanted to be a bodyguard and went under the name of Mayday? A few points to think about.

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